“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”
When Breath Becomes Air is the acclaimed bestselling memoir by Paul Kalanithi. At the age of thirty-six, on the cusp of finishing his training to become a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. In a single moment, his entire world and future were upended. When Breath Becomes Air follows Paul’s transformation from a naive student to an accomplished surgeon, chronicling his battles with his health, identity and mortality. Whilst Paul died in 2015 while working on the book, his lessons have become an invaluable and life-affirming guide to facing the challenge of death. If you loved Kalanthi’s work, join us today at What We Reading for the best books like When Breath Becomes Air!
Being Mortal: Medicine And What Matters In The End – Atul Gawande
First up in our list of books like When Breath Becomes Air is Atul Gawande’s 2014 book, Being Mortal. Medicine has revolutionised birth, injury and infectious diseases ranging from the manageable to the harrowing. But, with the inevitability of ageing and death, the goals of medicine more and more appear to be at odds with the human spirit. Nursing homes pin patients to beds and wheelchairs, doctors carry out devastating procedures that prolong suffering and hospitals isolate the dying from others.
Gawande, a practising surgeon himself, ponders on the limitations of his profession, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for both patients and families. Being Mortal offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for helping out the infirm and elderly, showcasing the ways in which someone’s last weeks or months are as dignified and fulfilling as possible.
On The Move: A Life (Oliver Sacks’ Memoirs #2) – Oliver Sacks
From the first few pages on his obsessions with motorcycles and speed, Oliver Sacks’ On the Move is brimming with his renowned restless energy. Similar to When Breath Becomes Air, Sacks recounts his experiences as a neurologist in the early 1960s. First in California where he struggled with addiction, then in New York, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital.
With unbridled wit and candour, Sacks demonstrates how his physical passions drive his cerebral ones. He talks about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual, his guilt over leaving his family for a life in the States, the writers and scientists that influenced him, and how his unconventional engagement with his patients defined his life.
Brain On Fire: My Month Of Madness – Susannah Cahalan
Brain on Fire is an instant New York Times bestseller and award-winning memoir by Susannah Cahalan. Like When Breath Becomes Air, it tells the remarkable story of one woman’s struggle to reclaim her identity.
When twenty-four-year-old Susannah woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to either move or speak, she had no recollection of how she had gotten there. Mere days earlier, she had been at the beginning of an exciting new relationship and a promising career with a prominent New York newspaper. Now, she was labelled as violent and psychotic. But what happened? In a breathtaking narrative, Cahalan tells her own story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her and the lifesaving diagnosis that very nearly didn’t happen.
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly – Jean-Dominique Bauby
Another one of the best books like When Breath Becomes Air, Jean-Dominque Bauby confronts mortality and the ways in which disease changes your life in his memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
In December 1995, Jean-Dominique, then editor-in-chief of French ‘Elle’ and father of two young children, suffered a massive stroke. He was left paralysed and speechless, but still entirely conscious in a state doctors called ‘locked-in syndrome’. Using his only functioning muscle – his left eyelid – he was able to painstakingly spell out, word for word, this remarkable story. A haunting look at locked-in prison syndrome, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is also a homage to the enduring power of the human spirit, perfect for any fans of Paul Kalanithi.
This Is Going To Hurt: Secret Diaries Of A Junior Doctor – Adam Kay
Another one of the best medical-themed memoirs like When Breath Becomes Air comes from Adam Kay in his 2017 book, This is Going to Hurt. In it, he chronicles the 97-hour weeks, life and death decisions, the constant tsunami of bodily fluids, and how the parking meter outside his workplace earns more than him.
Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and countless missed weekends, Adam Kay lifts the lid on what life is really like on the frontlines of a health service being pushed to its breaking point. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this memoir/diary is filled with everything a reader wants to know – and more than a few things they don’t – about life on and off the hospital ward.
Tuesdays With Morrie – Mitch Albom
Have you ever had someone in your life you could always count on for guidance and support? For author, screenwriter, journalist and broadcaster Mitch Albom, that someone was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from over two decades ago. As we grow up and move on, our connection with these mentors can fade. As do the insights. But, wouldn’t it be great to have an opportunity to see and speak to them again and ask the biggest questions that still haunt you?
Mitch Albom was able to get that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the closing months of the older man’s life. Knowing that he was dying of ALS – or motor neurone disease – Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday. Tuesdays with Morrie is the end result of these reunions, where their rekindled relationship turned into one final class on lessons in how to live.
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Managing Bubbie – Russel Lazega
Managing Bubbie is a heartrending and hilarious family memoir by Russel Lazega that recounts the hectic, chaotic and exhausting experiences of his Jewish family in Miami Beach as they attempt to take care of their elderly matriarch, Lea Lazega. An aging stubborn Holocaust survivor, Russel details the scramble to find an acceptable assisted living facility, get her medication in line and struggle to control a woman who, time and time again survived catastrophe by refusing to do what she was told.
The book is both a relatable family tapestry and a revisiting of the Holocaust that demonstrates how hope, humour and love can still emerge from the deepest despair. Any reader with a soft heart and sharp funny bone will find themselves laughing, crying and commiserating with Russel and his family as they manage their beloved, impossible Bubbie.
The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon was asked to give a ‘Last Lecture’, he didn’t have to imagine it as his last, since he had already been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Only the lecture he gave, ‘Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams’, wasn’t about dying. It was a lesson in the importance of overcoming obstacles, enabling the dreams of others and seizing every moment. In short, it was a summary of everything he had come to believe about living.
The Last Lecture captures all of the humour, inspiration and intelligence that made Randy Pausch’s lecture such a phenomenal success around the world. Still one of the most powerful life-affirming biographies in recent times, it is a must-read for anyone who loved When Breath Becomes Air.
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Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
